Housing matters. Bad housing harms health, holds children back at school and can contribute to marital breakdown. It is of grave concern, then, that Britain is now gripped by a growing housing crisis.

This week the government launched its "radical and unashamedly ambitious" housing strategy for England. It is, as I have said elsewhere, nothing of the sort – but what has been largely missed is the human face of this housing crisis and the fundamental unfairness of the government's plans; unfair to tenants and unfair to the taxpayer.

The housing strategy includes the government's Orwellian affordable rent model, which will be completely unaffordable to those who need it most, those on low incomes. In Haringey in London, a rent set at 80% of local market rents would require a household income of £31,000 at a time when the median income for social tenants is £12,000. Figures suggest that there will be a £1.3bn rise in the benefit bill as a result.

The government's own document setting out how this rent model will work reveals that funding for actual affordable low-rent social rented housing will only be considered in exceptional cases. Just one day after the housing strategy was published, the disastrous impact of cuts to affordable housing was revealed: housing starts fell 99% for homes at social rent over the last six months, from 26,300 to 259; affordable homes also fell from 35,735 to just 454.

This out of touch government's credibility has been shattered. Grant Shapps likes to claim that last year his government built more affordable homes for rent than any time since 1995-6, but the facts show that the 60,000 new affordable homes built last year were planned for, financed and started by the last Labour government.

The housing strategy will push more people into the costly private rented sector, where the average weekly cost of housing benefit is £36 higher than in the social sector. On security of tenure the government is doing no better. Grant Shapps said in 2009 that he had "no plans to change security of tenure for existing or future tenants or raise their rents towards market levels". Yet through the Localism Act, there will be new flexible tenancies to encourage social mobility – and if the tenant moves they lose their security of tenure and will end up paying 80% of market rents.

The government's flagship policy, the New Homes Bonus, is fundamentally unfair, a clear characteristic of everything the government does on housing. The City of London will get £28.51 per head; Knowsley, the 12th most deprived constituency in England, receives 38p per head.

In the private rented sector, there is still nothing in the way of protection for tenants. On coming into government, Shapps scrapped the National Register of Landlords, regulation of letting and managing agents, and compulsory written tenancy agreements – measures set out by Labour because all tenants deserve a basic minimum standard in their housing. The coalition government then rejected our attempts to introduce amendments to the localism bill that would have required local authorities to establish accreditation schemes for landlords to better regulate the sector to drive standards up and rogue landlords out.

This is a housing strategy that is radically and shamefully unfair. The hardest hit will be the less well-off. Families will fear being turfed out of their homes, young couples will struggle to pay the rent and the most deprived areas will receive the least.

We have all had enough of false dawns, grand plans and press launches followed by broken promises and a failure to deliver. Sadly, a decent home at a price we can afford has never been further away than it is today.